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Saint-Geours is one of the many French executives who have built a reputation in the government bureaucracy and then "parachuted" to a lofty position in business. He served with the French mission to the United Nations in Manhattan, later became the government's director of economic forecasts and had a hand in shaping France's monetary policy. Four years ago he moved to Crédit Lyonnais. Because the bank is really controlled by the government, the shift was much like a promotion within the government economic hierarchy.
Unlike some older French bankers, Saint-Geours argues that "it is possible to mix social legislation with the big business of the Common Market." He adds that, "the part that business can play is in fair and socially sensitive hiring policies. Companies must not merely select candidates on the basis of training or aptitude, but must keep a strong eye out for sex, race, socioeconomic standing and need." Saint-Geours's statements have raised some eyebrows in the stuffy world of French banking. "The system is basically an old-boy net," he says, "and it overlooks dozens of qualified men who drop out because they do not feel involved in what they are doing." Saint-Geours himself has been helped along by the old-boy net, yet he would heartily applaud its demise. Says he: "There is no one at my level in the conservative business of banking who is further to the left than I."
Apostle of Togetherness
From his base in Frankfurt, Jürgen Ponto has done even more than Saint-Geours to advance the cause of togetherness in banking. Ponto's Dresdner Bank is Germany's second largest (after Deutsche Bank) with $13 billion in assets. It has joined seven other international banks to form Société Financière Européenne (SFE), the world's largest such group, whose partners have assets of $130 billion. Last year Dresdner Bank also linked with three European banks in the Associated Banks of Europe Corp. (ABECOR). Members' assets total $30 billion. With Ponto's help, ABECOR and three other banks are pooling the training of junior executives. The seven banks hold joint seminars and will soon open a training center near Frankfurt.
Ponto spent his early childhood in Ecuador and Chile, where his German father ran an export-import business. After the war he studied at Göttingen, Hamburg, Zurich, Cambridge and the University of Washington, where he did half a year of graduate work in international law. He joined Dresdner Bank in 1950 "out of curiosity about figures," and by 1969 made it to chief executive.
Ponto feels strongly about European economic integration: "It is simply too rational to fail." He is less optimistic about the development of East-West trade: "The question of true mutual exchange of goods must be judged much more skeptically. The Soviet Union can supply the West with raw materials, but most of the other Eastern European nations lack that capability." Last year he had a long talk at the Kremlin with Premier Alexei Kosygin, and the session apparently went well. Dresdner last week announced that it had applied for Soviet permission to open an office in Moscow and become the first Western bank represented there.
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